Wednesday, August 31, 2011

Amid the hoots at Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry for saying there were "gaps" in the theory of evolution, the strongest evidence for Darwinism presented by these soi-disant rationalists was a 9-year-old boy quoted in The New York Times.

After his mother had pushed him in front of Perry on the campaign trail and made him ask if Perry believed in evolution, the trained seal beamed at his Wicked Witch of the West mother, saying, "Evolution, I think, is correct!"

That's the most extended discussion of Darwin's theory to appear in the mainstream media in a quarter-century. More people know the precepts of kabala than know the basic elements of Darwinism.

There's a reason the Darwin cult prefers catcalls to argument, even with a 9-year-old at the helm of their debate team.

Darwin's theory was that a process of random mutation, sex and death, allowing the "fittest" to survive and reproduce, and the less fit to die without reproducing, would, over the course of billions of years, produce millions of species out of inert, primordial goo.

The vast majority of mutations are deleterious to the organism, so if the mutations were really random, then for every mutation that was desirable, there ought to be a staggering number that are undesirable.

Otherwise, the mutations aren't random, they are deliberate -- and then you get into all the hocus-pocus about "intelligent design" and will probably start speaking in tongues and going to NASCAR races.

We also ought to find a colossal number of transitional organisms in the fossil record -- for example, a squirrel on its way to becoming a bat, or a bear becoming a whale. (Those are actual Darwinian claims.)

But that's not what the fossil record shows. We don't have fossils for any intermediate creatures in the process of evolving into something better. This is why the late Stephen Jay Gould of Harvard referred to the absence of transitional fossils as the "trade secret" of paleontology. (Lots of real scientific theories have "secrets.")

If you get your news from the American news media, it will come as a surprise to learn that when Darwin first published "On the Origin of Species" in 1859, his most virulent opponents were not fundamentalist Christians, but paleontologists.

Unlike high school biology teachers lying to your children about evolution, Darwin was at least aware of what the fossil record ought to show if his theory were correct. He said there should be "interminable varieties, connecting together all the extinct and existing forms of life by the finest graduated steps."

But far from showing gradual change with a species slowly developing novel characteristics and eventually becoming another species, as Darwin hypothesized, the fossil record showed vast numbers of new species suddenly appearing out of nowhere, remaining largely unchanged for millions of years, and then disappearing.

Darwin's response was to say: Start looking! He blamed a fossil record that contradicted his theory on the "extreme imperfection of the geological record."

One hundred and fifty years later, that record is a lot more complete. We now have fossils for about a quarter of a million species.

But things have only gotten worse for Darwin.

Thirty years ago (before it was illegal to question Darwinism), Dr. David Raup, a geologist at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, said that despite the vast expansion of the fossil record: "The situation hasn't changed much."

To the contrary, fossil discoveries since Darwin's time have forced paleontologists to take back evidence of evolution. "Some of the classic cases of Darwinian change in the fossil record," Raup said, "such as the evolution of the horse in North America, have had to be discarded or modified as a result of more detailed information."

The scant fossil record in Darwin's time had simply been arranged to show a Darwinian progression, but as more fossils were discovered, the true sequence turned out not to be Darwinian at all.

And yet, more than a century later, Darwin's groupies haven't evolved a better argument for the lack of fossil evidence.

To explain away the explosion of plants and animals during the Cambrian Period more than 500 million years ago, Darwiniacs asserted -- without evidence -- that there must have been soft-bodied creatures evolving like mad before then, but left no fossil record because of their squishy little microscopic bodies.

Then in 1984, "the dog ate our fossils" excuse collapsed, too. In a discovery The New York Times called "among the most spectacular in this century," Chinese paleontologists discovered fossils just preceding the Cambrian era.

Despite being soft-bodied microscopic creatures -- precisely the sort of animal the evolution cult claimed wouldn't fossilize and therefore deprived them of crucial evidence -- it turned out fossilization was not merely possible in the pre-Cambrian era, but positively ideal.

And yet the only thing paleontologists found there were a few worms. For 3 billion years, nothing but bacteria and worms, and then suddenly nearly all the phyla of animal life appeared within a narrow band of five million to 10 million years.

Even the eye simply materializes, fully formed, in the pre-Cambrian fossil record.

Jan Bergstrom, a paleontologist who examined the Chinese fossils, said the Cambrian Period was not "evolution," it was "a revolution."

So the Darwiniacs pretended they missed the newspaper that day.

Intelligent design scientists look at the evidence and develop their theories; Darwinists start with a theory and then rearrange the evidence.

These aren't scientists. They are religious fanatics for whom evolution must be true so that they can explain to themselves why they are here, without God. (It's an accident!)

Any evidence contradicting the primitive religion of Darwinism -- including, for example, the entire fossil record -- they explain away with non-scientific excuses like "the dog ate our fossils."
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Forbes Magazine is a most respected resource for business leaders. The magazine recently came out with a list of the world's Most Powerful Women. Not surprisingly, they chose German Chancellor Angela Merkel as No. 1. This is doubtless because the conservative Merkel has been trying to get the European Union to shape up. Putting out economic fires in Greece , Spain , Ireland , and Portugal , Germany 's financial strength has been put to the test. Just how much longer can the EU rely on Germany 's productivity to subsidize European sloth? Merkel is like the old E.F. Hutton ads on TV: When Angela talks, Europeans listen.

Michelle Obama ranks only eighth on the list. This is somewhat surprising, since it's hard to gauge just how much influence she has with the world's Most Powerful Man. She recently interrupted a family vacation on Martha's Vineyard , flying back with the president aboard Air Force One. She apparently had read some of the criticisms of her separate flights-and the extra expenses chalked up by the Secret Service in accommodating the First Lady and her schedule. Still, Michelle Obama has to be considered a potential presidential candidate herself if her husband holds onto his office next year.

Mrs. Obama would have precedent on her side if she contends for the Democratic nomination in 2016. That's because of the trailblazing efforts of none other than Forbes' No. 2 Most Powerful Woman: Hillary Clinton.

This may be the most left-handed compliment ever for the left-leaning Secretary of State. Hillary Clinton was subjected early to criticisms-from left-wing blogs-that she had allowed herself to be placed in a "foreign policy burka" by President Obama, the man who bested her for the 2008 Democratic nomination. Some liberals even went so far as to claim the president had made Mrs. Clinton over as a "Saudi wife." Those were stinging criticisms.

It's a bitter irony that Mrs. Clinton left a safe U.S. Senate seat in New York to become Mr. Obama's compliant assistant at the State Department. Can she really approve of this administration's anti-Israel policies?

Was she even consulted when the president delivered a highly controversial speech on Israel last May while Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was en route to Washington? The president stated that the Israelis needed to consider returning to their pre-1967 borders. Those borders were indefensible and had led to Israel being invaded three times prior to the Six Day War in 1967.

Mrs. Clinton was nowhere to be seen when Netanyahu gave the president an on-camera rebuttal as they sat together at the White House. There was no fire in the elegant fireplace, but sparks nonetheless flew between the two leaders. Where was the World's Second Most Powerful Woman then?

In just days, President Obama went before a Washington gathering of AIPAC, the American-Israel Public Affairs Council. His purpose before this group was to climb down from the rash statements he had made just two days earlier. He should have led with the line about "1967 borders with appropriate swaps of territory," Mr. Obama confessed, trying to smooth ruffled feathers.

When she was a candidate for U.S. Senate and for president, Hillary Clinton never had to smooth any ruffled feathers of U.S. friends of Israel. How it must have galled the World's Second Most Powerful Woman to watch as the World's Most Powerful Man made a real mess of things.

She had to smile a forced smile and pretend there was nothing amiss. That's not a role that comes naturally to a miss like Hillary. Correction: A Ms.

Even with the president's approval rating going South, Hillary Clinton is trapped. She can't go West-to Iowa. Or North-to New Hampshire. She's already given notice that she'll be out as Secretary of State in 2013, and she will not run for vice president or president. Why would she do that? That's a guaranteed way not to gain power in Washington.

It's hard to imagine the ever-quotable, always notable Hillary Clinton winding up in such a state. But that's the revolting state she's in every day at State. Speaking of revolting states, it will be most interesting to see what role she's assigned when the UN General Assembly moves to grant Statehood to the Palestinians. Will Secretary of State Clinton be sidelined for that momentous event, too?

Hillary's place in the Obama administration is like that of Thomas Riley Marshall in the Wilson administration. Vice President Marshall compared his role to a man in a cataleptic state: He cannot speak; he cannot move; he suffers no pain; and yet he is perfectly conscious of everything going on about him.

It's certainly a most curious fate for someone who's supposed to be the World's Second Most Powerful Woman.
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Loyal readers know that I have been calling attention to a range of Second Amendment issues in the past week. In last week's column here, I wrote about the scandals and illegitimate regulations emanating from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. In another outlet, I documented the threat to our rights that is posed by the United Nations' proposed arms trade treaty.

In response, I have heard from many readers who are understandably outraged. They want our federal law enforcement agencies to respect the law, not break it. They want our negotiators at the U.N. to protect our unique constitutional rights, not surrender them to some Utopian vision of global harmony. With apologies to the late Bill Buckley, my readers feel powerless to climb athwart the federal leviathan and yell "stop."

Those two issues are just the tip of the iceberg. Two landmark Second Amendment cases recently were decided by the U.S. Supreme Court. The first established that the Second Amendment indeed does provide an individual right to keep and bear arms and a restraint against the federal government. The second case applied that finding to state and local governments, as well. Both cases invalidated Draconian handgun bans. Both were decided by the razor-thin majority of 5-4. But neither case established a precise boundary of regulation that the court might find acceptable.

Now lawsuits have been filed across the country seeking to invalidate long-standing state and local restrictions. The National Rifle Association is coordinating a nationwide legal strategy to fulfill the promise of the recent Supreme Court decisions. These cases are bubbling up in different federal circuits, testing different limitations. Some of the cases are filed by choice; some are by necessity. They are all expensive, and they are all important. The court inevitably will accept one or more of these cases once a split between circuits becomes established. That much is virtually certain.

But it's unknown what that court will look like. Will it be the same 5-4 majority that finally has recognized our fundamental Second Amendment rights, or will it be a new majority, perhaps 5-4 the other way, seeking to not only uphold state and local gun restrictions but also effectively reverse the two recent decisions with death by a thousand cuts?

That question will be answered by President Barack Obama, with the advice and consent of the Senate. We are one heartbeat away from giving that decision to this president. We are one election away from virtually guaranteeing that the next president will answer that question, whoever that may be. And we are one election away from making sure that there are enough pro-gun senators to give him the right advice, if not consent.

So, what do we do? As I tell my readers, we all have the power to remedy these issues and more through a singular action. But we do not hold it as individuals; it only will work if we use it collectively. That simple action is to register to vote and then cast an informed ballot.

Too many gun owners and hunters aren't registered to vote. I know you're out there, and I've heard all the excuses. That's all they are, and they're not worth the paper to print them. We stand one short year away from the high campaign season in which voters will select our next president, 33 senators and all 435 members of the House. The Senate could change leadership with a swing of just four seats. And this could be another presidential election decided by a scant few hundred votes in a single key state. I've identified nine key states that will be important in both the presidential and senatorial elections. As honorary chairman of the NRA's "Trigger The Vote" voter registration campaign, I will be doing everything in my power to identify, locate and register gun owners and hunters in these states. No, I won't tell you which states they are, because I don't want you to think your state isn't important. It is; they all are. And every election matters, for all the reasons laid out above.

If you're not registered to vote, then just do it. Visit our website, at http://www.TriggerTheVote.org, for all the information you need to fill out the form, print it and put it in the mail. It's just that simple. And if you are registered to vote already, then find someone who isn't. Show him this article. Tell him that I know he's not registered to vote -- and I'm not happy about it.
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When asked what posed the greatest challenge to statesmen, Harold Macmillan, the former British prime minister, responded, "Events, my dear boy, events."

That's because events tend to throw everybody off their plan. For example, Hurricane Irene ended President Obama's vacation early. And the hurricane's steady deterioration upset the plans of news producers who anticipated something more dramatic for their wall-to-wall coverage.

In a similar fashion, Obama and his advisors predicted the economy would do better -- much better -- than it has, and those predictions were wrong. The president blames events: the European debt crisis, the Japanese earthquake and tsunami, the political tsunami of the 2010 elections. Some of that is plausible, but the two years of anemic job and economic growth that preceded those events can hardly be blamed on them. An earthquake in Japan didn't make Obama's green-jobs initiative a bust, and the Euro crisis didn't render "shovel-ready jobs" a myth. And it's those failures that have scuttled Obama's plans for an easy re-election in 2012, and left him and his supporters stunned and shocked.

My National Review colleague Jim Geraghty has chronicled how, over the last few years, the media have greeted bad economic news by saying it is unexpected. For instance, Bloomberg reported "Sales of U.S. previously owned homes unexpectedly dropped in July." Reuters tells us that "Consumer spending unexpectedly fell in June." And so on.

Many who've been following the trend point to media bias. The press corps, writ large, wants Obama to succeed, argues American Enterprise Institute political analyst Michael Barone, so "they characterize economic setbacks as unexpected, with the implication that there's still every reason to believe that, in Herbert Hoover's phrase, prosperity is just around the corner."

I certainly think there's more than a little truth to that. The media get hooked on a story line -- hurricanes are getting worse because of climate change, Obama's a pragmatist doing the smartest things to fix the economy -- and when the facts contradict the story line, it's, well, unexpected.

But it can't be simply media bias because the experts whom reporters call for quotes also are surprised. As Geraghty notes, groupthink is a culprit too. The guys on Wall Street use the same Keynesian computer models as the folks in the White House.

There are no more devout members of the cult of expertise than mainstream journalists. They rely on experts for guidance about what is "mainstream" and accurate and what is not. Sometimes that's fine. Surgeons are extremely reliable sources to explain how a heart attack happens. They're not as reliable at telling you who will have one, save in a statistical sense, and even less reliable at telling you when a specific person will have one.

That's because prediction is hard. Experts -- in politics, economics, climate -- are very, very bad at telling people what will happen tomorrow, let alone next year or next century. How many of the economists who tell us what to do now failed to see the mortgage debt crisis coming? Nearly all of them.

Philip Tetlock's 2005 book, "Expert Political Judgment," documents that the predictions of even the most credentialed and experienced experts are often worse and very rarely better than random guessing. "In this age of academic hyperspecialization," he writes, "there is no reason for supposing that contributors to top journals -- distinguished political scientists, area study specialists, economists, and so on -- are any better than journalists or attentive readers of the New York Times in 'reading' emerging situations."

The cult of experts has acolytes in all ideological camps, but its most institutionalized following is on the left. The left needs to believe in the authority of experts because without that authority, almost no economic intervention can be justified. If you concede that you have no idea whether your remedy will work, it's going to be hard to sell it to the patient. Market-based ideologies don't have that problem because markets expect events in ways experts never can.

No president since Woodrow Wilson or Franklin Roosevelt has been more enamored with the cult of expertise than Obama. That none of his economic predictions have panned out is not surprising. What is surprising is that so many people are surprised.
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Conservatives yearn for a big, clarifying electoral victory in November of 2012, but they’re already winning decisively whenever Americans vote with their feet--or their moving vans.

New Census numbers show citizens fleeing by the millions from liberal states and flocking in comparable numbers to bastions of rightwing sentiment. Call it the Great Political Migration.

Between 2009 and 2010 the five biggest losers in terms of “residents lost to other states” were all prominent redoubts of progressivism: California, New York, Illinois, Michigan and New Jersey. Meanwhile, the five biggest winners in the relocation sweepstakes are all commonly identified as “red states” in which Republicans generally dominate local politics: Florida, Texas, North Carolina, Arizona and Georgia. Expanding the review to a 10-year span, the biggest population gainers (in percentage terms) have been even more conservative than last year’s winners: Nevada, Arizona, Utah, Idaho and Texas, in that order.

The shift in national demographics has already rearranged the playing field for the upcoming presidential election. States that Barack Obama carried were the biggest losers in the reapportionment that followed the 2010 Census, with New York and Ohio dropping two electoral votes each. Texas, meanwhile, gained a whopping four votes all by its Lone Star lonesome self. Even in the unlikely event that Obama carried exactly the same states he carried in 2008, he’d still win six fewer electoral votes in 2012. Even more tellingly, if the epic Bush-Gore battle of 2000 played out on the new Electoral College map, with the two candidates carrying precisely the states they each won 11 years ago, the result would have been a far more clear-cut GOP victory margin of 33 electoral votes (instead of the five-vote nail-biter recorded in history books).

Fifty years ago, the United States saw a mass migration from East to West. Today we’re witnessing a comparable migration from left to right.

This significant shift in population not only presents progressives with significant problems in terms of practical politics, but also confronts them with profound ideological challenges.

If liberal approaches work so well, why are so many people choosing to pack their bags and desert some of the most progressive, pro-labor, big-government states in the union?

And if uncompromising conservatism is a cruel, fraudulent disaster, why do small government, pro-business, low tax, gun-toting and church-going states draw such a disproportionate number of America’s internal immigrants?

In the emerging presidential campaign, it’s easy to see a version of these questions dominating the debate. Why should anyone choose to endorse liberal, Democratic policies when a single year (2009-10) saw 880,000 residents packing up their belongings to place Barack Obama’s Illinois in their rear-view mirror, while 782,000 new arrivals helped drive the robust economy in Rick Perry’s Texas?

During the bad-old-days of the Cold War so many people tried to leave East Germany that the Communists built a wall to keep them in. The world rightly took that gesture as evidence of failure and corruption in the Stalinist system.

California can’t raise a wall to prevent people from abandoning the Not-So-Golden State, or somehow deter or return the 2,000,000 who decamped between 2009 and 2010. Doesn’t this overwhelming outflow of residents count as powerful evidence of the failure, corruption and bankruptcy of the state’s leadership –long-dominated by legislative leftists, even under the moderate GOP governorship of Arnold Schwarzenegger? For the first time since statehood in 1850, a new Census brought no increase in California’s representation in Congress (or the Electoral College).

California has become a sad symbol of dysfunctional government at its shabbiest, shadiest, most sclerotic and irresponsible—an exquisitely painful irony for those of us who recall the Golden State’s onetime position in the national imagination. Not so long ago, the whole nation (or at least its most enterprising and adventurous elements) seemed to envy the state and to embrace the notion of “California Dreamin’.”

My late parents cherished that dream and made the trek from Philadelphia to my dad’s first job (after graduate school on the GI Bill) in San Diego. They loaded a battered, gray ’53 Plymouth with their possessions and their five-year-old son (me) and drove across the country for a thrilling new life. Growing up in the ’50’s and ’60’s, nearly everyone we knew seemed recently arrived from somewhere else, thrilled to experience the electric atmosphere of a place that seemed to define America’s bright future.

After my parents’ divorce, my father eventually decided to leave California for a corner of the earth that promised even more excitement and significance—Israel – and he spent the last 19 years of his life in Jerusalem. As for me, I finally persuaded my wife Diane (a fifth-generation Californian whose ancestors arrived in Gold Rush days) to move our family to Washington State in 1996, and there’s never been a day when I regretted that decision.

To some, this move from one center for liberal lunacy to another progressive outpost made no sense: Seattle offered the lefty politics as California, with considerably less sunshine. But there is one striking difference between these two Pacific Coast states: when it comes to state income taxes, California’s top rate recently crested to an appalling 10.3 percent (on top of federal tax burdens, sales tax, property tax, and much more). Washington, on the other hand, imposes no income tax at all, and ongoing growth makes Washington the only blue state (that’s right, the only one) that added a congressional seat in the recent Census.

The impact of state income taxes helps explain the flow of business and families to those states with more hospitable, less intrusive attitudes toward enterprise. The dollars involved are hardly trivial. California punishes the stinking, selfish, filthy rich by imposing the second highest rate–9.3 percent—on every dollar an individual earns beyond the obscenely lavish sum of $46,766. New York takes similar aim at privileged plutocrats, with individual tax rates of at least 6.75 percent for any earnings above …$20,000. But if those hard-pressed wage-earners make their way to Nevada, they’ll pay nothing in state income tax, and revel in their residence in one of nine states that avoid punishing earning and effort. Even in left-tilting Washington, voters in 2010 rejected (by nearly two-to-one) a state income tax placed on the ballot by Bill Gates Sr.

There are no real political refugees within the United States, and few families move from one state to another to search for more congenial political leadership. Climate, family concerns and job opportunities are all factors. But the contrasting cultures that state politics help to shape make a big difference in determining which parts of the nation seem more or less promising to potential migrants. With the Gallup Poll showing self-described “conservatives” outnumbering self-proclaimed “liberals” by nearly 2 to 1 (41 percent to 21 percent) it’s not surprising that states with pro-business, pro-family attitudes draw disproportionate numbers of new arrivals. At the same time, it makes sense that those states with aggressive, intrusive bureaucracies, high taxes and relentless experiments in multiculturalism will encourage mass departures.

The millions of re-settlers who move their families to more sympathetic venues surely feel motivated by personal considerations more than ideology, but they still play a role in reshaping the nation’s political future. For generations, conservatives tried to convince doubters that their ideas were right in some ultimate, philosophical sense. Now, with countless frustrated families making fresh starts in right-leaning states, they’ve obviously made the case that in the real world, it’s the conservative approach that works.

Has the AGW argument imploded?posted at 12:05 pm on August 31, 2011 by Ed Morrissey

Has new research disproven the theoretical models of anthropogenic global warming? A new study by a European nuclear research group appears to show that the actual prime cause of temperature shifts in the Earth’s climate isn’t carbon dioxide at all, or even the broader range of “greenhouse gases,” but the large ball of fire in the center of the solar system. Not that this study from CERN has attracted much attention in the media, at least not in the US — but at least Nature reported the results and the implications:

It sounds like a conspiracy theory: ‘cosmic rays’ from deep space might be creating clouds in Earth’s atmosphere and changing the climate. Yet an experiment at CERN, Europe’s high-energy physics laboratory near Geneva, Switzerland, is finding tentative evidence for just that.

Er, it really doesn’t sound like a conspiracy theory. The notion that the sun heats the planets is rather mundane, or at least it used to be before scientists started claiming that carbon dioxide would superheat the atmosphere. In fact, AGW skeptics have long pointed to solar cycles as a much more likely explanation for the gradual but uneven warming seen over the last century or so.

To find out, Kirkby and his team are bringing the atmosphere down to Earth in an experiment called Cosmics Leaving Outdoor Droplets (CLOUD). The team fills a custom-built chamber with ultrapure air and chemicals believed to seed clouds: water vapour, sulphur dioxide, ozone and ammonia. They then bombard the chamber with protons from the same accelerator that feeds the Large Hadron Collider, the world’s most powerful particle smasher. As the synthetic cosmic rays stream in, the group carefully samples the artificial atmosphere to see what effect the rays are having.

Early results seem to indicate that cosmic rays do cause a change. The high-energy protons seemed to enhance the production of nanometre-sized particles from the gaseous atmosphere by more than a factor of ten. But, Kirkby adds, those particles are far too small to serve as seeds for clouds. “At the moment, it actually says nothing about a possible cosmic-ray effect on clouds and climate, but it’s a very important first step,” he says.

Lawrence Solomon declares the science settled already in his column at the Financial Post. He also notes that Kirby has a reason to downplay the results of the research, and it’s not because of scientific caution:

The science is now all-but-settled on global warming, convincing new evidence demonstrates, but Al Gore, the IPCC and other global warming doomsayers won’t be celebrating. The new findings point to cosmic rays and the sun — not human activities — as the dominant controller of climate on Earth. …

Nigel Calder, a former editor of The New Scientist who attended that 1996 conference, would not be cowed. Himself a physicist, Mr. Calder became convinced of the merits of the argument and a year later, following a lecture he gave at a CERN conference, so too did Jasper Kirkby, a CERN scientist in attendance. Mr. Kirkby then convinced the CERN bureaucracy of the theory’s importance and developed a plan to create a cloud chamber — he called it CLOUD, for “Cosmics Leaving OUtdoor Droplets.”

But Mr. Kirkby made the same tactical error that the Danes had — not realizing how politicized the global warming issue was, he candidly shared his views with the scientific community.

“The theory will probably be able to account for somewhere between a half and the whole of the increase in the Earth’s temperature that we have seen in the last century,” Mr. Kirkby told the scientific press in 1998, explaining that global warming may be part of a natural cycle in the Earth’s temperature.

The global warming establishment sprang into action, pressured the Western governments that control CERN, and almost immediately succeeded in suspending CLOUD. It took Mr. Kirkby almost a decade of negotiation with his superiors, and who knows how many compromises and unspoken commitments, to convince the CERN bureaucracy to allow the project to proceed. And years more to create the cloud chamber and convincingly validate the Danes’ groundbreaking theory.

Solomon says that CERN has “found the path to the Holy Grail of climate change,” although they seem intent on hiding the evidence of it. Solomon links to a graph that Nature apparently didn’t publish, which shows the reaction from cosmic rays in the CLOUD chamber and the rapid creation of particles associated with cloud formation in the atmosphere:

The graph above does not appear in the print edition of Nature, but it does make showing at the back of the online supplementary material. The graph shows how cosmic rays promote the formation of clusters of molecules that can then grow and seed clouds in the real atmosphere.

At 03.45 am in a CLOUD experiment in Geneva, ultraviolet light began to create molecules in the cloud chamber, which approximates the air in the atmosphere. Jn above shows the neutral phase of the experiment, during which the CLOUD experiment electrically removed ions and molecular clusters. At 4.33 am, the CLOUD experiment stopped the electrical removal and allowed natural glalactic cosmic rays (Jgcr) to enter the chamber through the roof of the Geneva building, leading to a faster rate of cluster buildup.

Then, at 4.58 am, CLOUD also beamed charged pion particles (Jch) from an accelerator (these are equivalent to cosmic rays), the rate of cluster production took off, convincingly demonstrating the effect of cosmic rays on cluster growth.

British newspapers like the Register and the Telegraph have reported on the results from CERN, but it’s not received much attention from the American media. Investors Business Daily wonders why all of those who proclaimed the supposedly “settled science” are now so quiet:

With the help of an eager media, they have spun a nearly believable tale of fright and insulated themselves well from the skeptics.

But their days are few. Truth keeps getting in the way of their indoctrination effort.

And it’s not just the CERN research creating a problem for them. They also need to explain why sea levels, like presidential approval numbers and consumer confidence, have fallen. According to NASA, the oceans are down a quarter of an inch this year compared to 2010.

Under the rules of climate change, sea levels, due to melting ice and water that expands as it warms, should be increasing in a way that we’re all supposed to believe is a threat. But NASA scientists say that El Nino and La Nina, weather cycles in the Pacific Ocean, have caused sea levels to fall.

The new CERN research is certainly promising. I’d like to see more before we declare it a Holy Grail, however. Scientific concepts require reproducibility for credibility, although it’s certainly true that AGW has been a glaring exception to the scientific method. The first results of this research explain a lot of the failures of the AGW models, which relied on CO2 as a trigger for temperature increases with no correlation ever proven and no AGW climate model ever producing an accurate prediction. Let’s stick to actual science rather than blind devotion to faith, which is all that AGW advocates have now to keep going.

Overall U.S. unemployment is 9.1 percent. For white adults, it's 8 percent, and for white teens, 23 percent. Black adult unemployment stands at 17 percent, and for black teens, it's 40 percent, more than 50 percent in some cities, for example, Washington.

Chapter 3 of "Race and Economics," my most recent book, starts out, "Some might find it puzzling that during times of gross racial discrimination, black unemployment was lower and blacks were more active in the labor force than they are today." Up until the late 1950s, the labor force participation rate of black teens and adults was equal to or greater than their white counterparts. In fact, in 1910, 71 percent of black males older than 9 were employed, compared with 51 percent for whites. As early as 1890, the duration of unemployment among blacks was shorter than it was among whites, whereas today unemployment is both higher and longer-lasting among blacks than among whites.

How might one explain yesteryear's lower black unemployment and greater labor force participation? The usual academic, civil rights or media racial discrimination explanation for black/white socio-economic differences just wouldn't hold up. I can't imagine even the most harebrained professor, civil rights leader or media "expert" arguing that there was less discrimination a century ago and that explains why there was greater black labor market participation. Racial discrimination or low skills can explain low wages but not unemployment.

During the 1930s, there were a number of federal government interventions that changed the black employment picture. The first was the Davis-Bacon Act of 1931, which mandated minimum wages on federally financed or assisted construction projects. During the bill's legislative debate, the racial objectives were clear. Rep. John Cochran, D-Mo., said he had "received numerous complaints ... about Southern contractors employing low-paid colored mechanics getting work and bringing the employees from the South." Rep. Clayton Allgood, D-Ala., complained: "Reference has been made to a contractor from Alabama who went to New York with bootleg labor. ... That contractor has cheap colored labor that he transports, and he puts them in cabins, and it is labor of that sort that is in competition with white labor throughout the country." Rep. William Upshaw, D-Ga., spoke of the "superabundance or large aggregation of Negro labor." American Federation of Labor President William Green said, "Colored labor is being sought to demoralize wage rates." For decades after Davis-Bacon enactment, black workers on federally financed or assisted construction projects virtually disappeared. The Davis-Bacon Act is still on the books, and tragically today's black congressmen, doing the bidding of their labor union allies, vote against any effort to modify or eliminate its restrictions.

The National Industrial Recovery Act of 1933 and the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 broadened the number of workers covered by minimum wages, with negative consequences for black employment across a much wider range of industries. Good intentions motivate most Americans in their support for minimum wage laws, but for compassionate public policy, one should examine the laws' effect. That's seen by putting oneself in the place of an employer and asking, "If I must pay $7.25 an hour to no matter whom I hire, does it pay me to hire a worker who's so unfortunate as to have skills that enable him to produce, say, only $4 worth of value an hour?" Most employers would view hiring such a worker as a losing economic proposition; therefore, a minimum wage law discriminates against low-skilled workers by reducing employment opportunity.

Being unemployed has significant negative social consequences, one of them noted in the 1960s by Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who raised the alarm about the link between joblessness and the decline of the black family, saying that men without work become less attractive as marriage partners. Between 1890 and 1940, a slightly higher percentage of black adults had married than white adults. Today black marriage rates have fallen precipitously, where 72 percent of black children are born to unwed mothers.
_____________________________________________

There are now enough Operation Fast and Furious officials playing hide-and-seek in the Obama administration to fill a "rubber room."

That's the nickname for taxpayer-subsidized holding pens, such as the ones in the New York City public schools, where crooked employees are separated from the system and paid to do nothing. Perhaps the White House can stimulate a few construction jobs by adding an entire rubber room annex for "reassigned" scandal bureaucrats at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. It's getting mighty crowded.

On Tuesday, the Justice Department announced it was shuffling Kenneth Melson, acting director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, out of his job. The disclosure comes amid continued GOP investigations into the administration's fatally botched straw gun purchase racket at the border and spreading outrage over legal obstructionism and whistleblower retaliation by DOJ brass. The DOJ inspector general is also conducting a probe.

Internal documents earlier showed that Melson was intimately involved in overseeing the program and screened undercover videos of thousands of straw purchases of AK-47s and other high-powered rifles -- many of which ended up in the hands of Mexican drug cartel thugs, including those who murdered Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry last December. Fast and Furious weapons have been tied to at least a dozen violent crimes in America and untold bloody havoc in Mexico.

In secret July 4 testimony, Melson revealed he was "sick to his stomach" when he discovered the extent of the operation's deadly lapses. Join the club, pal.

Melson told congressional investigators that he and ATF's senior leadership "moved to reassign every manager involved in Fast and Furious, from the deputy assistant director for field operations down to the group supervisor" after ATF whistleblowers went to the press and Capitol. But according to Melson, he and company were ordered by Justice Department higher-ups to remain silent about the reasons for the reassignments.

In other words: the ATF managers in the know were "effectively muzzled while the DOJ sent over false denials and buried its head in the sand," as GOP Rep. Darrell Issa, chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, and Sen. Charles Grassley, the ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, concluded in July.

Melson has been kicked back to DOJ's main office in a flabbergasting new slot as "senior adviser on forensic science in the department's Office of Legal Policy." He may have been "sick to his stomach," but the federal careerist apparently has no intention of quitting an administration with blood on its hands. And now he'll be advising others on how to track and handle evidence. Nice make-work if you can get it.

Others on the Fast and Furious dance card of lemons:

-- Assistant U.S. Attorney Emory Hurley in Phoenix, who helped oversee the straw gun purchase disaster. He's being transferred out of the U.S. Attorney's Office's criminal division and into the civil division.

-- Assistant ATF Special Agents in Charge George Gillett and Jim Needles. Moved to other positions.

-- BATF deputy director of operations in the West, William McMahon. Promoted to ATF headquarters.

-- ATF Phoenix field supervisors William Newell and David Voth. Promoted to new management positions in Washington.

Keep your friends close and your henchmen on the verge of spilling all the beans closer.

There's been only one visible Fast and Furious resignation: U.S. Attorney Dennis Burke in Phoenix, who quietly stepped down on Tuesday. One of his last acts? Opposing the request of murdered Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry's family to qualify as crime victims in a court case against the thug who bought the Fast and Furious guns used in Terry's murder.

The fish rots from the head down, of course. DOJ is run by Eric Holder, the Beltway swamp creature who won bipartisan approval for his nomination -- even after putting political interests ahead of security interests at the Clinton Justice Department in both the Marc Rich pardon scandal and the Puerto Rican FALN terrorist debacle. Remember: Holder won over the Senate by arguing that his poor judgment made him more qualified for the job.

Another guy with nice hair and a good tan is working on the Obama job plan. He’ll be a great addition at Martha’s Vineyard.

This ought to work out as well as Geithner doing his own taxes.

This week, Obama announced his new econ czar would be Alan Krueger, a Princeton economist who figured out that if you gave billions away to the auto industry in price incentives, auto sales would go up.

OK. Sales only went up temporarily. But he’s the only member of the Obama administration who possesses an understanding of the relationship between price and sales. Maybe that’s progress for an administration that seems to sabotage every economic plan they come up with.

However, count me as skeptical.

Krueger likes taxes.

He likes them a lot.

He likes taxes on the rich, the poor, carpools, employers, employees.

Did I say he likes taxes? He really, really does.

He proposed a national sales tax- he calls it a consumption tax- that would be a hardship on the poorest Americans and be a direct drag on the economy, as even he admits.

“The main downside of this proposal,” he said of his sales tax scheme, “is that taxes reduce economic activity. But the government must make critical trade-offs, and a consumption tax could be the most efficient means to raise revenue to finance essential government functions.”

Taxes reduce economic activity? A startling admission from an Obama administration official, especially one who is an economics professor. I never thought they’d figure that part out.

But then Krueger goes on to strain credibility by claiming we have “essential government functions.” I didn’t know we had a government that functioned at all, yet alone essentially.

They don’t work off a budget; they don’t pass bills that accomplish what they propose to do; they fight more wars even as they condemn the cost of war; they shut down energy production even as they decry our increased dependence on foreign oil; they kill jobs in industries they don’t favor, like oil even while they complain that rich people aren’t doing their fair share to help create jobs.

“The Administration believes that it is no longer sufficient to address our nation's energy needs by finding more fossil fuels,” says Krueger, “instead we must take dramatic steps towards becoming a clean energy economy.”

Forget finding new oil. Can we just use the oil we have?

We are sitting on 4.3 trillion barrels of oil in the western US, enough to keep us going for 600 years without importing another drop. This is oil that would keep $400 billion in our economy every year and reduce our trade imbalance by 2/3rds. And the economics professor says no?

Did he use TurboTax to deduce this?

They strained might and main to raise taxes on the rich most of this year- which conservatives opposed- yet now, by appointing Krueger as the new czar of the Obama whackosystem, they seem to be signaling that they will be willing to compromise by agreeing to raise taxes on everyone, rich and poor alike.

“Another downside is that a consumption tax,” Krueger says as an aside, “is a greater burden for the poor, who spend a relatively high share of their income.”

But the government really needs the money so that they can help the poor, says Obama.

The poor being taxed to help the poor. Finally the Obama administration has come full circle.

Now you know what happens when socialists run out of other people’s money: They tax the poor.
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White House Admits New Regulations Will Cost US Economy BillionsBy Guy Benson
8/31/2011

Here's an idea for the president: Instead of going through the motions of giving another "major address" on jobs -- essentially re-heating a litany of old ideas -- why not take unilateral action and clear job-killing regulatory sludge out of the economy first?

President Barack Obama says his administration is considering seven new government regulations that would cost the economy more than $1 billion each a year, a tally Republicans will pounce on to argue that Congress needs the power to approve costly government rules.

In a letter to House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, Obama lists four proposed Environmental Protection Agency rules and three Transportation Department rules estimated to cost in excess of $1 billion. One of the proposed EPA rules — an update to the health-based standard for smog — is estimated to cost the economy between $19 billion and $90 billion. The letter, dated Tuesday, comes as the Republican-controlled House prepares to consider legislation that would require congressional approval for any new regulations that would impose a significant cost on industries.

Republicans have heaped criticism on this administration for imposing, via executive fiat, social and economic measures that failed to pass Congress. These maneuvers have been decried as effective end-runs around the people's branch. While most presidents engage in this to some extent, the sheer volume of Obama's regulations is striking. Several of his administration's executive power-grabs have been so brazen and conspicuous (CO2, DREAM, Boeing), the GOP is (partially) building its alternative job-growth agenda around undoing the damage:

Since passage of H.Res. 72 on February 11, our committee chairmen have been investigating and inventorying regulatory burdens to job creators. They’ve found many that have tied the hands of small business people and prevented job growth. By pursuing a steady repeal of job-destroying regulations, we can help lift the cloud of uncertainty hanging over small and large employers alike, empowering them to hire more workers. Our regulatory relief agenda will include repeal of specific regulations, as well as fundamental and structural reform of the rule-making system through legislation like the REINS Act, the Regulatory Flexibility Improvements Act, and reform of the Administrative Procedures Act (all three bills are expected on the floor in late November and early December).

The following is a list of the 10 most harmful job-destroying regulations that our committee chairmen have identified, as well as a selective calendar for their repeal. These regulations are reflective of the types of costly bureaucratic handcuffs that Washington has imposed upon business people who want to create jobs.

Click through to see House Majority Leader Eric Cantor's top ten regulatory targets. Meanwhile, Speaker John Boehner has stepped up his inquiries into the potential cost of more than two hundred new regulations in the pipeline:

Obama’s administration has identified 219 proposed regulations this year with a cost to the economy of more than $100 million each. Boehner, in a statement, said the administration should now release detailed cost estimates for all those proposed regulations. “At a time like this, with our economy struggling to create jobs, it’s misguided for the federal government to be imposing so many new rules with such enormous costs, even when some of those rules may be well-intentioned,” he said.

As Politico notes, executive regulatory edicts are up 15 percent over last year, despite the administration's stated goal of paring back the expanding regulatory regime. The GOP's political and policy response is fairly straightforward: We don't need a jobs speech. We need the government to get out of the way and unleash the private sector.

The ever-reliable supporters of big government at CNN offer this interesting insight: Political antagonism toward deficits may exacerbate the long-term impact of natural disasters by lessening the federal government's ability to help.

This, like the approach to every other issue that becomes the subject of liberal cogitation, assumes that humans are too stupid to change their behavior when their environment changes.

To wit, if states know that there isn't a free bucket of federal money awaiting should something bad happen, they will prudently build up their reserves, creating "rainy day funds" for disasters like Irene. The same goes for individuals who, whether self-insuring like states or purchasing insurance policies, will better prepare for disasters rather than relying on the forced charity of residents of other states to subsidize their bad luck or intentional risk-taking. Furthermore, the discipline imposed by self-insuring or by the provisions of a private policy will improve not only the financial preparations for disasters, but also the physical preparations for them. (How many of you have added an alarm system to your house or car to lower your insurance premiums and your own risk?)

I like the part of the story in which the Federal Emergency Management Agency, commonly known as FEMA, says it won't immediately honor what certain Senators think are its responsibilities but are not yet funded. Here's the relevant section of the piece:

FEMA is making its own adjustments. To make room in its budget for cleanup efforts after Irene, the agency is delaying some rebuilding projects in Joplin, Missouri, where devastating tornadoes struck this year.

"For any projects that have not come in for approval, we're not going to be able to fund those at this point. We're going to postpone those," FEMA Administrator Craig Fugate said at a White House briefing Monday, referring to some efforts in Joplin.

Missouri's two U.S. senators released statements blasting the bureaucratic move.

"If FEMA can't fulfill its promise to our state because we have other disasters, that's unacceptable," Republican Sen. Roy Blunt said in a statement.

The lesson here is that Missouri and other states shouldn't rely on the federal government in the first place if their goal isn't to make war (whether on foreign soldiers or on American entrepreneurs). After all, if the federal government can't even do well those few non-military things it's actually supposed to do, like immigration, why do we want or expect it to do a good job with things it was never supposed to do, like being involved in flood insurance (or health insurance for that matter)?

Like the famed blind squirrel, Ron Paul gets it right when it comes to FEMA, arguing that it completely perverts the idea of insurance through the National Flood Insurance Program. Since when is it the responsibility of a Coloradoan to subsidize the risk taken by someone who doesn't just build a beach house in a hurricane-prone coastal region, but who then uses other people's money to rebuild it when big bad hurricane Wolf blows it down?

Sure, when private markets provide flood insurance, the price is higher than the government-issued and taxpayer-subsidized program we have now and would thus likely pressure the real estate values of homes whose owners need the insurance. But that's life. Among the rights granted in our Constitution, one does not find the right to have others assume your risk. Such socialization of risk (as seen most famously in the TARP program, other bank bailouts, and the Obama Administration's destruction of decades of law in the reorganizations of GM and Chrysler) is anathema to the Founders' explicit aims. After all, the conception of the role of the state to protect "life, liberty and property" as originally drafted for the Declaration of Independence wasn't about government making Mr. Smith protect Mr. Jones' property. If Jones' property is more likely to be destroyed in its particular location, then it is worth less than it otherwise would be without that risk… and it shouldn't be Smith's problem.

FEMA's most famous adventure was their disastrous handling of Hurricane Katrina. While President Obama called FEMA's response to Hurricane Irene "exemplary," perhaps the reason it seems so is that governors along the East Coast took the lessons of Katrina to heart and did their jobs as chief executives rather than relying on Big Brother. FEMA seems like it did a good job because it was asked to do so little -- so far. However, with requests for federal aid coming from states along our Atlantic Coast, FEMA will have plenty of opportunity to show whether it is still the dysfunctional bureaucracy we've come to know and, to put it kindly, be somewhat skeptical of. But, like a Yugo, even if it performs OK, that doesn't mean it's a good idea.

And to the extent that FEMA's role in the Irene disaster ends up being handing out checks, it inevitably drifts into another vote-buying scheme for whichever administration is in power at the time, leading bureaucrats into the irresistible temptation to make Smith feel good about the government by using Jones' money. As Milton Friedman said, the least careful way that money is ever spent is when someone (like government) is spending another person's money on yet another recipient. When A is spending B's money on C, neither A nor C care how much or how wisely that money is being spent. That's actually putting it kindly, as both A and C have the incentive to spend as much of B's money as possible, thus adding government budget disaster to natural disaster.

Instead of complaining about the limitations of the federal government when it comes to disaster relief, the obvious lesson of Hurricane Irene is that even for storms that ravage a half dozen states in a weekend, local response and responsibility is preferable to relying on a federal organization. FEMA, like all federal bureaucracies and despite what I assume to be the best intentions of most of its employees, is run by people who are unlikely to understand local subtleties in any given disaster area. And, as we're seeing now, disaster response by a federal agency allows federal politics to interfere in what are truly the most localized problems where localized knowledge and incentive to help one's friends and neighbors should be of great benefit.

For example -- and understanding that the scale of the disasters was different and that New Orleans had more than its share of problems prior to Hurricane Katrina -- four years after Katrina, New Orleans was still waiting for the federal government to take care of its lingering school problems. In a way, Katrina did the educational system in that city a favor, "wash[ing] away the old, failed system of public education." Yet the public school system there, despite the mostly beneficial addition of many charter schools, is still far behind schedule and over budget on rebuilding as they live in a world where fiscal responsibility is deadened by the opiate of OPM (other people's money.)

In Joplin, Missouri, on the other hand, where fully a third of the city was erased by a tornado in May, schools opened on time just three months later, including a high school that the city creatively fashioned from what used to be a department store. As a commenter on the left-leaning Huffington Post website opined, "I agree those in Joplin helped each other out after the devastating tornadoes. They did not wait for FEMA or the federal government to intervene. They got to work. I do feel for those people in Irene's path. But self reliance and common sense go a long way too."

A new Pentagon report indicates China’s sustained military investments are destabilizing and exposes the Marxist giant’s global ambitions. The free world had better wake up to the security threat posed by this hegemonic menace.

Last week the Pentagon issued its annual report to Congress, which warns, “China’s rise as a major international actor is likely to stand out as a defining feature of the strategic landscape of the early 21st century.”

But the report “mischaracterizes and minimizes that threat,” according to Steve Mosher, a social scientist who worked in China and is author of numerous books on the country. The report “does a disservice to the truth,” Mosher said.

The truth about China’s emerging global threat becomes obvious when Beijing’s intentions, behavior and military modernization are properly exposed.

First, China’s intentions are global and offensive. Constantine Menges wrote in China: The Gathering Threat, “In the traditional Chinese view, the world needs a hegemon—or dominant state—to prevent disorder. The Communist Chinese regime believes China should be that hegemon.”

That view was echoed in 2010 by Liu Mingfu, a Chinese senior colonel and author of The China Dream. Liu said “China’s big goal in the 21st century is to become world No. 1, the top power,” Reuters reported. The Pentagon’s report stops short of that forecast but admits the regime “anticipates becoming a world-class economic and military power by 2050.”

China’s latest defense White Paper provides evidence of its global ambitions. The paper, according to the Pentagon report, introduces the Peoples Liberation Army (PLA) to new global missions intended to grow China’s influence, such as international peacekeeping efforts, counter-piracy operations, humanitarian assistance and disaster relief.

These other-than-war operations are made possible by China’s new investments in large amphibious ships, a hospital ship, long-range transport aircraft and improved logistics. Such assets extend China’s global influence and provide the PLA important expeditionary know-how and capabilities for future operations.

China’s global ambitions are also evidenced by its increased liaison with foreign militaries and increased joint exercises. Last year, China expanded relations to 150 different militaries, which reflects an effort to collect information and build partnerships.

Beijing’s foreign outreach includes more joint exercises. In 2010, the PLA participated in 32 joint exercises—up from eight in 2009—to increase its influence, enhance ties with partner states, and provide opportunities to improve capabilities and gain operational insights from more advanced militaries.

China’s White Paper also announces the regime’s “active defense” security strategy, which pretends to focus on defense and promises to attack only if attacked. But Mosher says China’s use of the term “active defense” is just a euphemism for the PLA’s “determination to strike first in the event of a crisis.” He concludes “active defense” is “not defensive at all, but is a strategy of offense and expansion.”

Second, China’s behavior has become aggressive, and given its global ambitions, we can expect more bullying across all domains—land, sea, air, space and cyberspace.

China is aggressive with Taiwan, a breakaway Chinese democratic republic. Beijing intends to deter Taiwan independence through intimidation such as the massing of 1,200 short-range ballistic missiles opposite the island or through a threatened preemptive attack.

China aggressively responds to maritime boundary disputes with Japan over the East China Sea and numerous countries in the South China Sea. Beijing claims both seas, and since 2005 it has harassed foreign vessels, including American ships using those seaways.

Beijing is very aggressive in cyberspace. In 2010, American and ally computer systems were the target of many intrusions that appeared to originate in China, according to the Pentagon. Those breaches were aimed at stealing military-related data and the PLA’s cyber units are prepared to “constrain an adversary’s actions” and “serve as a force multiplier.”

The report states China developed an anti-access ballistic missile to prevent American aircraft carriers from coming to Taiwan’s defense. The “carrier-killer” missile could also be used globally against America’s 11 carriers. The weapon is known as the DF-21D and has a range exceeding 940 miles.

China is developing a fighter aircraft that incorporates stealth attributes for long-range missions against well-protected targets—read American military facilities. A Chinese proto-type, the J-20, was tested earlier this year, but the Pentagon does not expect it to achieve “effective operational capability prior to 2018.” China has approximately 2,300 operational combat aircraft and another 1,450 older fighters, bombers and trainers.

The Communist regime is developing a global expeditionary capability. Specifically, Beijing is developing airborne early-warning and control system aircraft that, combined with aerial-refueling programs, will enable the regime to extend its naval air capabilities globally.

The PLA has numerous expeditionary forces, such as three airborne divisions armed with modern equipment. But China’s most important expeditionary tool is the aircraft carrier. Beijing recently sea-tested a refurbished Russian carrier, and the Pentagon reports, “China could begin construction of a fully indigenous carrier … which could achieve operational capability after 2015.”

The carrier is the latest addition to China’s modern 274-ship blue-water navy, which includes at least 60 submarines. China continues to produce a new class of global-capable nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines armed with the atomic-tipped JL-2 submarine-launched ballistic missile with an estimated range of 4,600 miles.

In 2007, China successfully tested a direct-ascent anti-satellite (ASAT) weapon against a weather satellite. It continues to develop and refine this system as well as other kinetic and directed-energy technologies for ASAT missions.

Finally, China is growing its strategic missile program backed by a developing anti-ballistic missile system. The Pentagon expects China to invest considerable resources to maintain its nuclear arsenal, which Beijing claims will never be used unless it is first attacked by atomic weapons.

But that view disputes a 2005 statement by Gen. Zhu Chenghu, a dean at China’s National Defense University, who said that if the U.S. used conventional arms on Chinese territory, "We will have to respond with nuclear weapons," according to the New York Times.

The Pentagon reports China added 25 new multi-warhead road-mobile, solid propellant intercontinental-range ballistic missiles to its arsenal in 2010. Beijing’s growing nuclear arsenal is kept safe in deep underground bunkers connected by 3,000 miles of tunnels, a complex that until this report was kept secret.

The Pentagon also for the first time affirmed China is developing a nationwide missile defense system. Reportedly Beijing’s nonexplosive, high-speed interceptors can hit missiles at heights of up to 50 miles. “In January 2010, China successfully intercepted a ballistic missile at mid-course, using a ground-based missile,” according to the Pentagon.

China’s hegemonic intentions, aggressive behavior and sobering militarization demonstrate an emerging, dangerous new global threat. The U.S. and its allies must prevent China from becoming a global hegemon that would use that position to push its Marxist ideology.____________________________________________

A Sunday school teacher was telling her class the story of the Good Samaritan. She asked the class, "If you saw a person lying on the roadside, all wounded and bleeding, what would you do?" A thoughtful little girl broke the hushed silence,
"I think I'd throw up."

DID NOAH FISH?

A Sunday school teacher asked, "Johnny, do you think Noah did a lot of fishing when he was on the Ark ?" "No," replied Johnny. "How could he, with just two worms."

THE LORD IS MY SHEPHERD

A Sunday School teacher decided to have her young class memorize one of the most quoted passages in the Bible - Psalm 23. She gave the youngsters a month to learn the chapter. Little Rick was excited about the task - but he just couldn't remember
the Psalm. After much practice, he could barely get past the first line. On the day that the kids were scheduled to recite Psalm 23 in front of the congregation, Ricky
was so nervous. When it was his turn, he stepped up to the microphone and said proudly, "The Lord is my Shepherd, and that's all I need to know."

UNANSWERED PRAYER

The preacher's 5 year-old daughter noticed that her father always paused and bowed his head for a moment before starting his sermon. One day, she asked him why. "Well, Honey," he began, proud that his daughter was so observant of his messages. "I'm asking the Lord to help me preach a good sermon." "How come He doesn't answer it?" she asked.

BEING THANKFUL

A Rabbi said to a precocious six-year-old boy, "So your mother says your prayers for you each night? That's very commendable. What does she say?" The little boy replied, "Thank God he's in bed!"

ALL MEN/ALL GIRLS

When my daughter, Kelli, said her bedtime prayers, she would bless every family member, every friend, and every animal (current and past). For several weeks, after we had finished the nightly prayer, Kelli would say, "And all girls." This soon became part of her nightly routine, to include this closing. My curiosity got the best of me and I asked her, "Kelli, why do you always add the part about all girls?" Her response, "Because everybody always finish their prayers by saying 'All Men'!"

SAY A PRAYER

Little Johnny and his family were having Sunday dinner at his Grandmother's house. Everyone was seated around the table as the food was being served. When Little Johnny received his plate, he started eating right away. "Johnny! Please wait
until we say our prayer." said his mother. "I don't need to," the boy replied. "Of course, you do "his mother insisted. "We always say a prayer before eating at our house." "That's at our house." Johnny explained. "But this is Grandma's house and she knows how to cook.

THE BIBLE

Did you know that... When you carry the Bible, Satan has a headache. When you open it, he collapses. When he sees you reading it, he faints. Let's read the Bible every day so he keeps on fainting. Maybe one day he'll have a stroke and never wake up.

And did you also know that when you are about to forward this email to others, The devil will discourage you, but forward it anyway.

The English are feeling the pinch in relation to recent events in Libya and have therefore raised their security level from "Miffed" to "Peeved." Soon, though, security levels may be raised yet again to "Irritated" or even "A Bit Cross." The English have not been "A Bit Cross" since the blitz in 1940 when tea supplies nearly ran out. Terrorists have been re-categorized from "Tiresome" to "A Bloody Nuisance." The last time the British issued a "Bloody Nuisance" warning level was in 1588, when threatened by the Spanish Armada.

The Scots have raised their threat level from "Pissed Off" to "Let's get the Bastards." They don't have any other levels. This is the reason they have been used on the front line of the British army for the last 300 years.

The French government announced yesterday that it has raised its terror alert level from "Run" to "Hide." The only two higher levels in France are "Collaborate" and "Surrender." The rise was precipitated by a recent fire that destroyed France's white flag factory, effectively paralyzing the country's military capability.

Italy has increased the alert level from "Shout Loudly and Excitedly" to "Elaborate Military Posturing." Two more levels remain: "Ineffective Combat Operations" and "Change Sides."

The Germans have increased their alert state from "Disdainful Arrogance" to "Dress in Uniform and Sing Marching Songs." They also have two higher levels: "Invade a Neighbor" and "Lose."

Belgians, on the other hand, are all on holiday as usual; the only threat they are worried about is NATO pulling out of Brussels.

The Spanish are all excited to see their new submarines ready to deploy. These beautifully designed subs have glass bottoms so the new Spanish navy can get a really good look at the old Spanish navy.

Australia, meanwhile, has raised its security level from "No worries" to "She'll be alright, Mate." Two more escalation levels remain: "Crikey! I think we'll need to cancel the barbie this weekend!" and "The barbie is canceled." So far no situation has ever warranted use of the final escalation level.

Tuesday, August 30, 2011

What should we call people who hate America’s Judeo-Christian heritage, even to the point of barring clergy at a ceremony at the site of a major tragedy?

How about “theophobic?” The word is already out there. You can look it up.

In one special case, we can just call the theophobe “Mayor.” That would be Michael Bloomberg, New York’s trendy, formerly Republican leader, who has topped even his own endorsement of a mosque near Ground Zero by forbidding prayer at the upcoming ceremony commemorating the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks.

Maybe Mr. Bloomberg is only selectively theophobic, and would consider allowing some Muslim prayers, or perhaps an atheistic chant. To be fair, it must be noted that he has not had a problem with the display of the World Trade Center Cross, a 20-foot edifice composed of steel beams found that way in the Ground Zero rubble.

But his tone deaf moral equivalence when it comes to Ground Zero sensibilities is still stunning. Faced with opposition to the proposed mosque, he said, “I think it's fair to say if somebody was going to try, on that piece of property, to build a church or a synagogue, nobody would be yelling and screaming."

No, because it wasn’t Christians or Jews who hijacked the jetliners and rammed them into the Trade Centers, killing nearly 3,000 people. That’s kind of an important detail.

I was on a radio talk show the other day when the otherwise sane and articulate host ventured that people with a religious worldview cannot be expected to have open minds. This would rule out Isaac Newton, Albert Einstein and geneticist Francis Collins, not to mention George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, and all the poets from Shakespeare to Robert Frost.

And if it’s true that all religions are equal when it comes to shutting down the mind, why did science uniquely explode in the Christian Western World, as Stanly Jaki so eloquently explains in his book The Savior of Science?

Perhaps my talk show host was drinking from the same fountain as the ever vigilant ACLU, which works ceaselessly to stamp out any public evidence of America’s religious reality. On any given day, the ACLU is yanking Ten Commandments monuments out of the ground or warning schools not to let pesky prayers find their way into football coaches’ motivational speeches.

Earlier this month, the ACLU managed to scare off a Florida panhandle community town from providing insurance for a rally honoring the victims of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks. Why? Because God is in the mix.

Threatened with a lawsuit, the Milton City Council decided against providing insurance coverage for the “Restoring Faith in God, Country and Patriotism Rally.” Money raised for the event was originally earmarked for the Wounded Warrior Project, a charity that aids people injured in the War on Terror.

Milton, which lies just northeast of the Naval port and airfield at Pensacola, will still host the non-denominational assembly at the town high school football stadium to commemorate the tenth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. But it will cost more than it should have.

The original plan was to place the event under the city's blanket insurance coverage, but organizers instead had to purchase two hours of coverage for almost $1,000, thanks to the theophobes at the ACLU.

Milton Mayor Guy Thompson, a recipient of an ACLU warning letter, replied with an August 15 letter of his own: “The purpose and intent … is to commemorate the tragic events of Sept. 11, 2001 and to honor and celebrate those who died that day. The City also recognizes the efforts and sacrifices of our service men and women and others who have given so much to protect our nation and keep us safe.”

Yeah, let’s make it harder for cities to sponsor events like this.

In San Diego County, ">the ACLU threatened to sue over a $21,000 grant given to the Green Oak Ranch for capital improvements because the ranch is run by a Christian ministry. The ACLU said in an Aug. 2 press release that the grant violated the “No Aid Clause” of the California Constitution, which bars direct aid to religious entities even if the money is for non-religious purposes.

The ranch has long been used for events involving local governments and charities. In May 2005, for example, the ranch hosted a county-sponsored Foster and Kinship Family Celebration.

The ACLU’s interpretation of the statute, along with decisions by liberal courts, discriminates against religious organizations while allowing aid to non-religious entities. That’s tantamount to an official pro-atheistic policy. This flies in the face of the First Amendment, which bars establishment of religion, including the narrowest faith of all, atheism.

San Diego County Supervisor Chairman Bill Horn, who sponsored the grant, is probably on a wanted poster at ACLU headquarters. His Web page has a photo of him presenting a proclamation honoring the Boy Scouts and another of him observing the National Day of Prayer. A public enemy, to be sure.

Green Oaks is used by many groups, according to its chairman, who told a local news station that “beneficiaries can be religious, non-religious, atheists, evangelicals, it doesn’t matter.”

Well, it still matters to the ACLU, whose work is never done.

From coast to coast, the liberal hostility to Bible-based faith knows no bounds. Maybe it’s time for the psychiatric profession to add “theophobia” to the manual of mental disorders.

It does seem to interfere with normal, rational thinking.
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Throughout the August recess, members of the Congressional Black Caucus have been barnstorming across the country, conducting town hall meetings, and addressing constituents. The Blaze and Naked Emporer News collaborated to monitor what's being said at these gatherings, and what they've uncovered is distressing. Beyond headline-grabbing provocations from Rep. Frederica Wilson ("the real enemies") and Rep. Maxine Waters ("straight to hell"), several additional CBC members have engaged in flagrant, and often profoundly offensive ("hanging from a tree"), racial appeals. Their intentional racially incendiary language chafes. Their efforts to promulgate and exploit a bitter "us-versus-them" racial dichotomy saddens. Via our erstwhile colleague and newly-minted Beckian, Chris Field:

Serving up a flippant "new tone" quip here wouldn't come close to doing this clip justice. Conservatives are often accused of employing secret, subtle "dogwhistles" to (supposedly) appeal to their ideological kin's baser instincts. This video depicts elements of the CBC openly -- even gleefully -- stirring up racial tensions, without any pretense of subtlety, and with zero apparent hesitation. It's disgraceful. What's especially perverse is that The Blaze and NEN will inevitably be labeled as racists merely for highlighting the words of black members of Congress. A poll released last week revealed that nearly 2/3 of Americans say race relations have remained the same, or actually deteriorated, during Barack Obama's presidency. With some powerful elected officials eagerly sowing racial paranoia and discontent within minority communities, should we be surprised by Americans' pessimism?

As the 2012 presidential race gears up, leftist Christophobes are showing some signs of hysteria -- or political opportunism; it's sometimes difficult to tell.

The New York Times' executive editor, Bill Keller, in a piece in The New York Times Magazine, argues that presidential candidates should be asked tough questions about their faith. Keller wants to know whether a candidate will place "fealty to the Bible, the Book of Mormon ... or some other authority higher than the Constitution and laws of this country" and "whether a president respects serious science and verifiable history." He wants to make sure "religious doctrine" does not become "an excuse to exclude my fellow citizens from the rights and protections our country promises." His colleague, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, followed up with a hit piece on "Republicans Against Science."

Keller is insatiably curious about whether Rick Perry subscribes to beliefs of certain pastors who endorse him and about Michele Bachmann's "mentors who preach the literal 'inerrancy' of the Bible, who warn Christians to be suspicious of ideas that come from non-Christians, who believe homosexuality is an 'abomination,' who portray the pre-Civil War South as a pretty nice place for slaves and who advocate 'Dominionism,' the view that Christians and only Christians should preside over earthly institutions."

It doesn't bother me if the media vet presidential candidates on their religious beliefs and associations, provided equal scrutiny is applied to all of them, including closet secularists. One's worldview invariably informs his political views, and information about those worldviews can't hurt.

But Keller's concern isn't with the religious beliefs of all candidates, only Christians, and not all Christians, just those who take the Bible seriously. He doesn't seem to have any problem with the religious beliefs of non-Christians or about charlatans who opportunistically pass themselves off as Christians. Wouldn't an objective reporter have as much interest in someone fraudulently proclaiming a certain faith as he does in one who sincerely professes a faith he finds repugnant?

Did President Obama, for example, subscribe to the noxious political and religious beliefs of his pastor Jeremiah Wright? If not, why did he attend church there for 20 years and have his children baptized in that church? If so, shouldn't Keller's leftist ilk have followed up on why Obama agrees with Wright? Is it merely accidental that Keller's candidate-faith anxiety is centered on conservative Christian candidates Bachmann and Perry?

Kellerian leftists shudder at the prospect of "irrational" and "reality-challenged" conservative Christians who question leftist dogma on global warming and evolution and who, they ludicrously believe, would turn America into a Christian theocracy. They want them nowhere near the seats of governmental power.

But what's irrational is their fear that Christians are enemies of religious liberty and advocates of theocracy. Never mind the strong Christian influence on America's founding. Never mind that most of America's presidents have been professing Christians. Liberty has no greater ally than believing Christians of all stripes.

If reality is their concern, why don't these leftists, instead of focusing on fantastic fears that a certain type of Christian president might shut down religious liberty, turn their attention to a president who is shutting down the economy? That's reality. Why don't they inquire into the realism of Barack Obama and his team of economic advisers, what's left of them, stubbornly clinging to an economic agenda that is manifestly destroying our economy and bankrupting our nation? Why don't they question the stability and rationality of a president who won't take responsibility for his policies, continues to scapegoat his predecessor and is preparing yet another speech, even as we speak, to promote the very same reckless spending policies that have driven this nation into a financial ditch?

I doubt that Keller is much interested in the answers to the questions he demands be raised of Perry and Bachmann. He thinks he already knows the answers but wants to incite fear in us about them. He seems more interested in smearing certain candidates with the slanderous innuendo of his questions, such as the preposterous ones designed to suggest that certain candidates are theocrats who believe Southern slavery was a good thing.

The reality is that throughout our history, the halls of American government have teemed with Bible-believing Christians, and they've never pushed for theocracy. Ironically, it is leftists who are far likelier to use the power of government to selectively suppress political and religious liberties. They are the ones behind the Fairness Doctrine, network neutrality rules, campus speech codes and preventing certain ideas from being presented, alongside all others, in public classrooms.

Once again, our leftist friends are projecting. They are the ones showing their religious bigotry and proselytizing us to adopt their secularist worldview.
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